The Lernaean Strain
by simplesonnets
Summary: After losing her job, Darcy's summer was already starting off on the wrong foot. Well it was until an envelope promising revenge over twenty years in making and the weirdest AIM conversation she'd ever had changed that. With the help of some new friends, Alexander Pierce won't know what hit him. [No Powers AU]
1. Invoke Clio

A/N:

*arrives over a year late with a mug full of chamomile tea* Hey kids, hows it going?

I'm beta-less this time around. After starting this over 2883298 times, I didn't want to bother my chrome cinnamon roll too shiny for this world editor so please forgive me for any mess ups. Grammar has never my strong suit and I am the typoooo queeen.

With that being said any constructive criticism would be appreciated. I just write for hours to stop myself from playing video games for hours but I'd like to improve.

* * *

Darcy Lewis' best ideas came to her in the shower. As she rinsed out her conditioner she wondered how hard it would be to slip a few squirts of Nair into her now ex-boss' bottle of Just for Men. His bottle of Balding Baseball Manager Brown with a Hint of Gray was easy to find in the employee bathroom cabinet, and Darcy was sure that some of her former co-workers would be willing to assist her.

After three years of bar tending at the Maroon Marlin Bar & Grill, she'd been fired by her royal douche of a manager. He was the sixth general manager in two years to run the small family owned bar, and somehow, someway, the most successful with a 14% profit increase within the last month alone. Not only was he a money making jerk, he was the prodigal son of the elderly owners, and therefore untouchable. So the firing of bespectacled brunette bartender #2 wasn't even something they'd even think about as long as they had money in their pockets and their precious baby boy back.

To add insult to injury, Darcy slipped in the puddle in front of the bar's entrance. Fuming about her unceremonious dismissal over her "unprofessional snark" led to Darcy forgetting about the moat that formed every time it rained. Lord Douchington could squeeze every last red cent out of a Tequila Sunrise but he couldn't figure out how to call someone to fix the busted storm drain before spring hit Philadelphia.

Even with all of her pain and embarrassment, the night wasn't completely terrible. Ian, a pre-law student she'd met in a theatre class, witnessed the whole thing while he was out with a group of friends. He'd offered both legal advice and a ride to her apartment, and she gladly accepted both. She and Ian had agreed that going after the old coots wouldn't be worth it, with what little mint and damp mints they had to spare, but her ex-manager was fair game.

Darcy groaned a she wrapped a towel around her body, thinking for a moment that she'd rather bust the bastard's car windows than sue him; it'd be quicker and cheaper at any rate. As she wiped down her steamed up mirror, she frowned at the deep blue and purple bruises that bloomed along her right arm. And if the low throbs of pain were anything to go by, Darcy was certain that her hip and thigh looked just as colorful. The ache along her right side gained a rhythm strong and steady enough to make Darcy forgo her nightly lotion ritual, choosing to instead shuffle to the kitchen for water.

She stopped mid-stride as she walked past her kitchenette. A yellow envelope in the center of her dark wood table caught her eye. Darcy had received notifications from the lobby desk about mail last week, but she didn't recall picking up any mail earlier that day. She didn't open unmarked white envelopes that were being left for her because no one could convince her that poisoned letters would ever go out of style. If anyone wanted to in touch Darcy badly, they wouldn't be able to do it through snail mail.

She carefully grasped the bottom end of the envelope and shook out a blue floppy disk and a white business card. The floppy disk was set aside as she looked over the card.

 _Here's a nibble for the insatiable._

There was nothing else on the otherwise pristine business card, not even a crease.

"So Patrick Bateman is sending me presents now?" Darcy grunted as she dug through boxes in her closet full of electronics. It had been 7 years, if that, since she'd even used a computer with a floppy disk drive.

After the mercifully brief search for a compatible laptop, Darcy popped in the floppy disk. The disk's contents looked harmless, initially. There weren't any "I kno wat u did last smmer" or "r these ur nudes?" messages done up in old Word Art like she'd been expecting.

There were, however, scanned images of memos and letters in English and other languages discussing accidents and assassinations. She recognized some of the dates and details but Darcy was so tired that she couldn't focus on them, until she saw her parent's autopsy reports.

 _Mark Lewis and Charlotte Webber-Lewis, Indianapolis Coroner's Report, August, 8th 1993._

She had no idea how long she stared at the screen until she remembered to breathe again. An old AIM notification popped up in the bottom right corner of her screen.

 _Would you like to know more, Darcy?_

"Who are you and where did you get all of this information?" She wrote back, her trembling fingers slowing down her response time.

 _What if I told you that your grandfather's rants had some merit?_

Darcy dragged her hands over her face as she tried to think if anything in particular had any merit. When Grandpa Rhett was mad, he was mad about everything. If he dropped a pan he was mad about that and the lack of fish biting at the lake, Lucky the dog pissing on everything in the garage, Darcy's attitude, the poor weather, and virtually anything else that came to his mind. Hurricane Rhett, as her cousins called him, ranted on about everything and as far he was concerned, it all had merit.

 _I think you know what this means, Darcy._

She nodded her head no as the pencil animation popped up on her screen.

 _Darcy, we are both victims of a conspiracy that's unfortunately far larger than just the two of us. I regrettably cannot give you any more information until you answer my question._

 _Would you like to know more?_

"Yes," she typed.

There was a vague feeling of déjà vu as she accepted the offer. The flashcards from Sunday school of Satan offering Eve fruit from the tree of knowledge came to mind, as did the question Darcy had posed after the lesson. Who was more dangerous: the one who offered knowledge or the nature of the knowledge?

 _I am glad that you've chosen to learn more. Tomorrow you will receive a package and a letter with your instructions. Do not open the package until after you have completed the last step listed in the instructions._

Mere moments after she read the last word, the chat cleared itself out and closed down.

There had been no answer when she'd asked who she was speaking to, so for all she knew she had been talking to the Ghost of Jason Bourne. And after a night like tonight, she wouldn't be surprised if a turtle neck wearing Matt Damon stalked her around Philly for the rest of the week.

Drained and on edge, a bleary eyed and red nosed Darcy shut down her devices and retreated into her room with an aspirin and her glass of water. Her last thoughts before falling asleep were of the parents she had mournfully few memories of.

* * *

That next morning the sweet temptation of aspirin, fresh coffee and an ice pack were the only things that could lure Darcy out of her bed. Her second cup of Joe was enough of a kick to get her back to the old laptop with the floppy disk some time before noon. She combed through what she hadn't gotten to yesterday, all while avoiding the autopsy reports. Most of it concerned material that would be footnote material in history books but there were a few bigger things that were surprising to see. No matter how different the documents were, they were all connected by two factors: illegal activities and Pierce International Services and Solutions.

In the United States there were products by four companies that anyone not living in abject poverty could find in their household: Stark Industries, Pierce International Services and Solutions, Hammer Dynamics and Advanced Idea Mechanics aka A.I.M.

If you were born after 1970 in North America and did not live an area where technology was frowned upon, then you'd probably been in at least one heated debate about which company was superior: Pierce or Stark. If you popped up into existence sometime after 1998, the debate was more like: Pierce vs Stark with some interference from Hammer. And if your young, unfortunate soul was tethered to this realm sometime after 2001, the debate turned into a melee with Pierce vs Hammer vs Stark vs AIM.

Stark reigned supreme over the other three in both worth and popularity but Pierce International Services and Solution was nothing to sneeze at. Darcy was confident that the company had a small army of lawyers on retainer that could make sure she'd be living off the grid for the rest of her life if anything from that floppy disk leaked to the public.

This wasn't reputation ruining stuff but if the dates and names on the memos were correct, there would be calls for investigations into why CEOs and CFOs were being informed of incidents and accidents days and even weeks before they actually occurred. The fact that there hadn't been anything in the news about these documents led Darcy to suspect that whoever sent her weren't involved with the media or law enforcement.

No matter what document she looked through, or how she looked at the situation, she still couldn't figure out why anyone had sent this to her. She was tech savvy and thanks to undergrad, the bees knees at research, but she couldn't find an angle to work with. And she definitely didn't see how her parent's deaths had anything to with the other documents, unless the mysterious AOL Satan was suggesting that they were somehow connected to Pierce International Services and Solutions. If AOL Satan was implying what she thought he was implying, she'd need to follow through with this.

After a quick lunch Darcy threw on a blue sweatshirt and jogging pants and rode the elevator down to the lobby floor of her apartment. She thought she was alone in the room until a wad of paper jostled her messy bun.

"Didn't know you were still in high school, Jack," Darcy said as she pulled out her mail.

Darcy liked Jack the most of all her neighbors. Tammy two doors down made the best blondies and Martin to the right of her was the quietest neighbor one could hope for but Jack was good people. He'd been a regular at the Maroon Marlin for some time before she'd recognized him as her neighbor. Jack didn't tell her in fear of her easing up on her pour with the Johnny Walker Blue he'd get every Friday.

"Anyone other than me could have done that, you know," he said as he unlocked his mailbox.

"Well you're the only other person in here so you're suspect number one. Plus you reek on Thursdays, dude. It's like just rolled around in a pile of manure and death, I can smell you from around the corner." She fanned her hand in front of her face. Jack's hair was combed back and looked less greasy than typical but his chin was scraggly, the bags under his eyes were practically bruises, and his jeans and t-shirt were dingy. "Why do you look like you're auditioning for a post-apocalyptic reboot of Tool Time?"

He rolled his eyes. "I literally just got off work, smart ass," he said as he tucked his package underneath his arm. "Speaking of work, are you on tonight?"

"Dickus Maximus gave me and my unprofessional attitude a final thumbs down." She grabbed her items and locked the mailbox. "I'll be on my couch watching Netflix tonight."

She explained what happened as they rode the elevator up to their floor.

"So are you gonna do the lawsuit?" He asked as they walked out of the elevator.

"No, it's not worth it. Plus I've got this family thing to take care of and it looks like it'll be keeping me busy for a while," she said as she flipped through her key ring.

"Oh uh, everything alright?"

"Not sure." She shrugged.

Darcy had a feeling that within the next couple of days her life would change forever, for better or worse.


	2. Make an Offering to Nemesis

AOL Satan didn't seem like the type to send the self-destruct after reading kinds of packages, but Darcy decided to play safe and followed the instructions, setting the package aside once she got back to her apartment to focus on the letter.

" _Ask for Anne Usher at the Central Library before 5 p.m. today. View microfilm reels 10 through 16 before viewing microfiche 2, 9 and 33. Request copies of the periodicals before closing time_ ," read the letter.

It was only 1 p.m. but Darcy didn't want to take any chances with the weather being as bad as it had been earlier in the week. She dug out her favorite matching blue raincoat and rain boots, threw on a scarf and beanie that wouldn't clash, and set out. It was a brisk 9 minute walk from her place to the library with thankfully little rain. Like many other buildings in Philadelphia, the Central Library was old, huge and not something she paid much attention to.

The inside turned out to be not as bad Darcy anticipated. No crypt keeper librarians, dust in the air or pervs shuffling through the stacks; just a few people milling around on a Thursday, minding their own business. One of the other librarians pointed to where Anne usually worked and asked her no questions. There were no shifty eyed once overs or pressing of red security buttons like she had been expecting, just a vague head nod towards the periodicals.

Old Anne Usher on the other hand was not nearly as receptive. She flinched, _flinched_ , when Darcy handed her the letter. The librarian gave her a stony glare when she asked Darcy to follow her. The woman's grip tightened around the letter as she warned Darcy to be done by 5pm or the police would take care of her. The librarian set up the reader and laid out the requested film and a legal pad before scurrying way.

Darcy gasped at the picture of the debris scattered field on the first microfiche. After finding her parent's autopsy reports on the floppy disk the night before, Darcy shouldn't have been surprised that the microfilm were all about the crash of Flight 016, the accident that they'd died in.

Wedged in between the pages of the legal pad was the passenger list for Flight 016. She dragged her gaze away from her parent' names to focus back on reviewing the rest of the microfilm. All of the film were about passengers from Flight 016, with the majority of the microfiche about the 34 environmental science researchers that died in the crash. Twelve of whom were scheduled to speak before Congress 2 days after the crash.

Darcy gathered her things and left the library in a daze. The microfilm and the floppy disk were pieces of a pattern, Darcy was sure of it. There were aspects of Pierce International Services and Solutions' business practices that the public didn't know about. Companies stuffing skeletons in warehouse sized closets was status quo, and hell, skullduggery was virtually a part of the American way. No matter how questionable certain ethical choices were, it stayed in house and some companies simply didn't get punished. But the status quo didn't matter to Darcy. Far too many companies lacked transparency and these things needed to be brought to somebody's attention. And if AOL Satan was gathering evidence to prove this, at least one person agreed with her.

* * *

Darcy managed to find some peace on her walk back to her apartment. Well, she was less worried about the package blowing up on her anyways. Didn't stop her hands from getting clammy or the nausea from creeping up on her as she cut her way into it. The contents of the package were blessedly non-lethal: a GPS, a prepaid phone and another letter. She let out a sigh of relief, this was shaping up to be more like a conspiracy edition of the Amazing Race than anything.

" _Hello Darcy, I'm pleased that you've chosen to seek the truth. In this package I have provided a phone to you to use and the keys to the vehicle that you will be using to travel to the destination enclosed in this letter. Hit the pound key and the number two when you reach your destination to hear further instructions,"_ read the letter.

She put the contents of the box and her taser in a satchel and made her way to her apartment building's attached garage. She walked around the first level of the garage clicking the lock/unlock button until she spotted the flashing lights of a dark green Jetta coupe tucked into a corner.

The GPS lead her to a place called Haverford, a community northwest of her place in Philadelphia. Haverford was nice with its big houses with green lawns and white picket fences, it was kind of like Stepford chic met Midwestern sensibility and had this upscale suburban baby. There was a noticeable lack of litter that made it look cleaner than her neighborhood. Well cleaner than most places in Philadelphia, really.

When the GPS signaled the end of the trip, Darcy found herself staring at a row of trees and a high fence with a stylish wooden gate. She took a moment to fish out the other phone, hit the speed dial and waited.

The phone didn't ring for long before Darcy heard muffled sounds, a groan and eventually, another voice on the other end.

"You got here pretty quick. You must be local huh?" A man asked, although it seemed more like he was thinking aloud than speaking to her.

"Uh, yeah… something like that?" Darcy replied. She waited a beat before continuing on, "So, are you gonna let me in or do I wait out here…"

"Hold on a second." The gate opened. "Pull through, you should be able to find the garage easily but stay on the phone until you get there."

She drove up a paved lane until it turned into a wide circular driveway with a small willowy shrub in the center. The house was pretty big, like bigger than most of the houses she passed, yet the light blue house maintained a visual balance that the others lacked. The man spoke again as the attached garage came into view.

"I see you. Once it opens up, park next to the red car and turn it off. Don't get out or unbuckle your seat belt, alright?"

"Sure." She pulled in and parked next to a mud splattered, bright red Nissan.

A sudden knock on her window launched Darcy's heart into her throat. She flailed, knocking her elbow into the steering wheel and her glasses down her nose. Once her heart stopped beating so fast, she held down the button for the window, shooting a fierce glare through her lopsided glasses as it lowered.

A man reached through her window and pulled out a letter from the visor, ignoring Darcy's baffled stare as he read it. A bit of his sandy brown hair stuck to his sweaty, tanned forehead. A roguish pug, she thought he resembled, with his compressed features and dark blue V-neck t-shirt, black leather jacket and jeans. He cleared his throat, making Darcy pause her perusal to look up. He winked as soon as their eyes connected.

"Why don't you reach underneath that passenger's seat for me? There should be an accordion folder there. Take that and your bag and wait for me at door." He jerked his chin towards the cement steps that led up to the door.

She did as she was told and carried the heavy folder to the steps, setting it down as soon as she got to the middle. As she watched the man dig through the Jetta's trunk, she noticed that the garage itself was nearly pristine. It kind of freaked her out because even in the cleanest homes one could find oil stains and dirty smudges somewhere in the garage. But from her seat Darcy couldn't see anything out of place. The gleaming tools hanging from hooks on the off-white walls looked just as spotless as the unused weed whacker and lawn mower.

The bang of the trunk closing broke into her thoughts. The man held a black briefcase in one hand and a tablet in the other.

"Alright sweetheart, move aside and follow me."

Darcy glared at the back of his head and followed him, hugging the folder close to her chest.

The inside was just as crisp and Good House Keeping cover worthy as the outside of the house. The mudroom and the hallway were covered in beige and blue colored textured wall papers and filled with various pieces of dark wood and silver color décor. Black and white photos and oil paintings framed in ornate silver lined the walls.

"My name is Clint by the way," he told her as they turned another corner. "I would've introduced myself properly but my clues have been a little time sensitive so far."

"Oh it's cool, I'm Darcy."

"Aaaand here we are." Clint announced as they entered a den with mint painted walls. Shelves full of books lined the walls and in the center of the room, in front of the fireplace, sat a loveseat, a coffee table and two arm chairs.

Near the stone fireplace stood another man. He was around Clint's height with deep brown skin, dark brown eyes and short black hair. He looked like a model in his plum sweater and charcoal pants. He turned his head at Clint's announcement, flashing a smile at them as he moved to sit down in one of the armchairs.

On the loveseat laid a red haired woman with a bandages on various parts of her arms. Her eyes were closed and she was reclined against her section of the seat, baring her scratched and bruised neck. Her ashen skin was a similar shade to that of the heather gray of her loose tank top.

"According to my letter the gang is all here. Go ahead and lay that folder down over there," Clint told her while pointing to the coffee table. "Gang, meet Darcy. Sweating out some poison on the couch is Natasha and that dashing gentleman over there is Sam," Clint said as he unloaded his suitcase. Sam shook Darcy's hand while Natasha stared at her with bloodshot green eyes.

"The letter also said that we get to see a little presentation before we get started." Clint tapped on his tablet, causing a project and a white screen to come down from the ceiling. The lights in the room dimmed as Darcy took the seat next Sam and Clint sat next to Natasha.

A blue screen with the word play flashing near the bottom corner flickered on the projector screen, and Darcy wondered briefly if this wasn't actually the beginning of a real life horror movie. To her relief a video started up instead of anyone popping into the room with an axe.

The video was footage from a deposition from the fall of 1976, the first time Alexander Pierce, co-founder and CEO of Pierce International Services and Solutions, sat before a Congressional committee. There he sat in his signature Pierce blue suit deflecting questions about the ethics of his involvement in rumored chemical warfare engineering. She'd read an article in her high school environmental science class about a journalist tipping off the EPA about some shady business, but she couldn't recall the details. A solid five minutes of the deposition played with all of it being sliced up and edited to show only the parts where Mr. Pierce denies the accusations against him. The video ended with him saying he'd done no wrong on loop.

The video cut away to a brown skinned older man sitting down in front of a white board. The caption stated that he was Leland Packard, a professor of geology at Culver University.

"The Little Mountain Mining Accident of 1986 was a unique incident in the sense that we have such little data on it. In fact, I've heard many of my colleagues say that had there not been 50 fatalities as a result of the accident, they wouldn't have believed that such an accident could have occurred," he said, the video cutting out at the end of his statement.

"What the hell?" Clint whispered as the image of a frizzy haired, middle aged woman popped up on the screen.

She stood near the edge of a large crowd holding candles, it looked like a vigil. The sandy haired woman's feathered bangs and coke bottle glasses screamed 80s to Darcy. The somber looking woman held up a picture of a man, in it he held a small boy smiling boy.

"I just want my Seth back," she said into the mic, her voice trembling with emotion. "I don't care if he needs help for the rest of his life. I just want him home." The camera zoomed in on her face as the tears streaked down her face. "I just want him to come back to me."

The video cut back to Professor Keen. "It was unique in that it was a surface mine that had a collapse, not an underground mine. With surface mines, miners dig and essentially scrape along the surface of the earth to mine the materials. There is no need to burrow into the earth and create tunnels and mine shafts to excavate. There was an explosion 30ft underneath the dig site that led to its collapse. What happened in Little Mountain, Wyoming, should not have been possible given the conditions."

The video jumped from Professor Keen's somber face to a video Darcy was all too familiar with. It started, as it always did, with an aerial view of the luggage and plane debris scattered across the bright green field. The sun gleaming off the metal of the smoking wreckage. Time seemed to slow down as the video switched to another camera as it panned over to show the smoldering plane cabin. It quickly switched back to that of a balding news anchor, a proto – Matt Lauer in a 1993 appropriate dark gray suit and deep red tie. His face solemn and his eyes red and glassy as the 'Plane Crash' graphic popped up on the screen.

"As we reported this morning, a plane crashed in a field outside of Indianapolis. We are getting confirmation from authorities that there have been no survivors. Again, we are now able to confirm that there have been survivors from the crash of Flight 016 out of Indianapolis Airport," he said.

They showed a montage of video packages the blame being shifted from the plane maker to the air gear engineers to the pilots until final report stated the cause being a freak accident on takeoff.

"Reports say that the cause was an accident. One in a million," read the caption.

The video paused on the caption until the image grew darker and darker until the screen was all black. In a flash an explosion appeared on the screen. The bright flash and boom cut through the silence and darkness and into the next video. The video of a man falling onto a box proceeding the explosion played on loop on half the screen while the video of political pundits played on the other half.

"With no video available, we can't be sure as to what really happened. I mean, who's to say Stark didn't orchestrated this himself," said a red haired man with skin as bright as his hair. The others sitting at the desk let out a startled gasp.

"I cannot believe you just said something like that, Tim. That's absolutely uncalled for," scolded a blonde woman.

"Usually I'd agree with you Tim you're pretty off with this one. Clearly it was the fault of the lab technicians. All of those deadly chemicals around, they were bound to mess up eventually," interrupted another man as the blonde woman looked ready to go on a tangent.

Darcy looked over to see Sam sunk down into his seat with wide eyed horror on his face.

"How did – there was no camera footage recovered from that day," he muttered, closing his glossy eyes as he turned away from the screen.

The buzz of white noise dragged Darcy's attention away from Sam and back to the screen. It changed abruptly to footage of a news anchor speaking rapidly in another language. Russian, Darcy guessed from the Cyrillic letters on the graphics. She couldn't quite place the time but it appeared to be sometime during the late 90s or early 2000s.

"A former KGB agent was assassinated by acute radiation poisoning," Natasha translated to them. She shifted forward, gripping her dark legging clad leg as she stared at the screen.

The video played video package, showing where the man appeared to have worked and lived before changing back to the blue screen, this time with the word stop flashing in the corner.

A message in white flashed across the screen.

" _Death in all of its permanence and finality often leaves us with more questions than answers. I know you all have felt it, that pang of wrongness that sweeps over you when you think of how they were taken from you. Some days you feel their absence like a shadow moving out the corner of your eye, elusive enough to make you uncertain of their existence. While other times their names are trapped at the tip of your tongue, poised to leave. But most days, you feel the wrongness crawling under your skin, right there under your fingertips keeping you up at night and keeping you on edge during the day. Your eyes are wide open, waiting for the final piece to click into place. Now is the time to seek the truth and find peace."_

The message stayed on the screen for a moment until the projector cut off and receded into the ceiling along with the screen.

Clint cleared his throat. "Now we can read whatever is in the accordion folder," he told them as the lights returned to normal. He dug through the folder and handed each of them a manila folder with their names written on the front.

"Don't know about this whole breaking and entering business," Darcy mumbled as she read her folder. Scrambling a system or two with a worm? No problem. Breaking in windows and shimmying down chimneys for loot however, that was completely different from what she was prepared to do.

Natasha got up from her seat with unexpected grace and set her bloodshot, piercing green eyes on Darcy.

"No matter what it takes, in two days we will do this," rasped the read head before slinking out of the room.

Darcy couldn't suppress her shudder as she watched Natasha leave.


	3. Learn from the Folly of Tantalus

a/n: Hey guys, sorry its been a while. I would've posted this earlier but irl got in the way.

* * *

Between the high fence and the dense trees on either side of it, she couldn't see much beyond what she assumed was the property line, but it was an amazing sight nonetheless. Her view of the sunrise was beautiful. She loved the way the warm, golden light danced across the pale green and cream striped wallpapered walls of her room. The light wood desk, armoire and headboard looked like something out of a period novel in the morning light. All of that, paired with the floral decorations made it the kind of room she'd dreamed of growing up in had her parents been alive.

But the Willow House, as Darcy had named it, was nothing like the Dutch Colonial home out near Chicagoland that she'd dreamed about. She'd been wrong about her initial assessment of it. It was not just hoity-toity Good Housekeeping cover fodder, it was beyond that. It was like the set of a Vanity Fair photo shoot grounded in upper middle class suburbia. Split between five levels were seven and half bathrooms, six bedrooms, a den, a study, a media room, a massive finished basement that looked like a miniature Bat Cave, manicured lawn with a garden and pool and a four car garage. It was bananas just how much was packed into the property.

It was the love child of Martha Stewart and Vogue in a life sized dollhouse form. The rug that laid on top of the polished wooden floor in her room was as fresh and plush as the carpet throughout the rest of the house. There were textured wallpapers and vivid paints on a good majority of the walls yet somehow the different designs and moods never clashed.

It was beautiful, no doubt but there was something almost too fresh and too new about it all. No grime or wear and tear could be found in her bathroom or in any other room that she'd been in for that matter. Darcy didn't see any dust or dirt in the crevices of the ceiling or in between the nooks of the railing as she walked down the stairs from her level.

Yet as unlived in and as fresh as everything looked, the only things she could smell at the moment was food. Her stomach churned as she walked into the dining room. After Natasha's departure following the presentation last night, Darcy and the two men sat in the quiet room still reeling from the presentation. They remained that way until Darcy's stomach rumbled and Clint suggested that they grab a bite to eat together before calling it a day. They quickly ate turkey sandwiches and exchanged some small talk before they retired to their rooms some time before 7pm.

The dining room was a balance of grey-blues and dark woods, and the chandelier, in all of its dangling sliver glory, scattered morning light around the room.

"Darcy, you have to try my home fries. I swear they're the best you'll ever have," Clint said as she sat in the seat across from him. He and Sam sat on either side of Natasha with plates and bowls in the middle.

"And so is the grapefruit," Sam chimed in, pointing at giant pink half on his plate. "This is really fresh."

"Well I'm glad that we weren't left slop and water. Who cooked the rest of it?" Darcy asked as she piled pancakes and scrambled eggs on to her plate.

"I cooked it all. My hands are magic," Clint said with a shrug, a smirk played at the corner of Natasha's lips.

"Magic? That's some pretty bold boasting, what else can they do?" Darcy asked Clint.

"Aside from making killer crepes, shooting a playing card dead center from 2,000 yards out is one of the many amazing things they can do."

She took a few bites of the pancakes and couldn't stop from humming in delight. The edges were buttery and crisp while the center was sweet and fluffy, similar to the way her Grandma Nora made them.

"I'm guessing from that look on your face that you believe me?"

Darcy nodded yes. "Dude, if your day job as 21st century carny doesn't work out, you should totally look into opening up a breakfast food truck or something." Sam nodded in agreement as he scooped more home fries onto his plate.

"Been there, done that. In my experience hitting moving targets is easier than running a kitchen," Clint said as he topped off Natasha's cup.

Darcy didn't notice just how bad Natasha looked until she watched the red head take a sip from her cup. Her skin didn't look as bloodless as it did the afternoon before but there was still a green tinge to it. Darcy did her best to not stare at that mottled the skin exposed by the scoop neckline of her shirt, her neck and shoulders looking just as dark and painful as the ones Darcy had. A row of stitches ran just below the red head's drop earrings and ended somewhere near the nape of her neck, right behind her low hanging bun.

Darcy turned her attention away from Natasha and over to Sam.

"So are you any good with your hands Sam?"

He sprinkled sugar on to his grapefruit. "Yes. You have to be in order to work with robots."

"Wait, robots as in battle bots or AISIMO?"

"What I make blows AISIMO out of the water. Think more along the lines of Transformers," he told her with a grin. "Or maybe even _I, Robot_ but with less uncanny valley."

The four of them spent the rest of the morning talking about robots and technology. Sam was scary smart, like one of the most knowledgeable robotics engineers Darcy had ever met, and she had met a ton of those nerds over the years. Yet he managed to make whatever he said easy to understand and took the time to explain it if it went over their heads. Industrial robots, Nano bots, dummy waiters, wireless room cleaners, he knew the ins and outs of all of them and made it fun to hear about.

After they finished cleaning the dishes, the quartet decided to explore the backyard. Darcy walked out to the western side of the yard while Clint and Sam went east and Natasha stayed near the terrace. The backyard looked just as beautiful in the cloudless, midmorning light as it did earlier that morning.

The grass in the back was as manicured as it was on the front lawn. Pink flowering shrubs lined the stone path that lead to the vegetable patch. The vegetable patch itself was fully of little light green sprouts poking up through the dark soil, each sectioned off and marked with a wooden pole labeling what was growing there. Carrots and potatoes took up one part, poles for tomato, peas, cucumber and pepper vines took up the other parts of the patch.

Darcy pulled her brown sweater closer to her body as a chilly breeze blew through the yard, carrying the scent of the pool water and fresh soil with it. She moved further up the yard, away from the vegetable patch and closer to the tightly clustered trees that grew near the fence that surrounded the yard. A dark wooden fence peeked through the lush, low boughs of the trees; the top of it camouflaged by the intertwined branches. She walked back to flag down the others.

"If the grass wasn't real I'd swear we were the newest Big Brother contestants," Darcy said as the other three caught up with her. "The fence is huge and probably way more solid than the walls in my apartment." She gestured to the fence as they approached the small area that she'd been talking about. All of them took turns tapping, poking, kicking and banging on the fence. Privacy fences were one thing but this was on a whole different level.

"It's only a shade darker than the rest of the exposed fence but doesn't feel like its wood all the way throughout," Natasha said as she studied the fence. "Even the densest of woods wouldn't sound like this when it's tapped. There's probably metal and or cement on the other side of the wood."

They each took another turn looking at it before they walked back to the house. After an afternoon of exploring the interior, they decided to pull together a plan of action for the break in that they would have to do in two nights.

* * *

Two nights later they drove to a home in a quiet, mostly vacant neighborhood 30 minutes south of Darcy's apartment. The day before they'd found a white van tucked into a corner of the garage. Bags and boxes of stuff they needed for their job and essential items from their homes were stacked in the back. Darcy thought it was convenient but also incredibly creepy that someone had managed to pick out and pack up all of her favorite comfy sweaters. She wondered just how long AOL Satan watched them before recruiting them.

Darcy withdrew from her musings to watch as Natasha leapt from a large branch and landed with a roll on to the adjacent roof. She clambered along the roof until she reached the skylight where she proceeded to cut away a piece of it large enough to slip through. After securing both the loose piece and her grappling hook, Natasha repelled down into the home.

A moment later the back gate swung open and Darcy let out a sigh of relief. As she crept through the overgrown backyard with Clint at her side, she couldn't believe that they were actually doing this. From what they'd said during the planning, she could tell that Natasha and Clint were pros at this whole breaking and entering thing but Darcy was still nervous. Reading documents that spelled out a potential corporate conspiracy was not illegal. Breaking and entering into a house on the other hand, was very illegal and potentially dangerous.

Darcy stumbled over a broken pot as they cleared the patio. The yard was littered with trash – everything from discarded soda bottles to broken patio furniture – and it was a miracle that she hadn't fallen before then.

"There's a safe on the second floor, last room on the left," Natasha told them as they stepped through the threshold of the sliding door. She held a lumpy black trash bag in one hand and coffee can in the other.

Darcy sucked in a deep breath as soon as they cleared the doorway, and regret hit her like freight train as she coughed through the stench of stale air and cat piss. She muffled her coughing with her forearm as they walked through the house. Some things were covered in white sheets but there were quite a few pieces of outdated décor and furniture that were covered in dust and fur. Darcy wondered what Pierce would even do with a place like this aside from hoarding cats.

The higher they went up the stairs, the hotter and darker it got. Sam sent in a robotic blue jay, one of his favorite inventions, to guide them through the dark. Darcy covered her nose with her hand as they passed through a cloud of thick dust; the particles fluttering in front of the bird's low white light.

Darcy heard nothing but the whirring of the robotic bird, Clint's breathing and their steps on the filthy carpet as they walked up the hall way. The blue jay flew into the open door way, zipped around in a circle above the safe and flew back into the hall. Clint dug into the book bag strapped to her back and threw down two activated green glow sticks to the floor.

"Will that be enough light?" He asked as Darcy bent down in front of the safe. It was an older model with a keypad and fingerprint reader right above the handle, nothing that Darcy thought would be much of an issue to access. She popped off the metal face of the fingerprint pad on the safe and examined the wiring.

"Crack a few more." She pulled out her tools and got to work, snipping wires and shoving various odds and ends around.

"I prefer to do it the old fashioned way," Clint said as he leaned against the wall next to the safe. "Or at least semi-old fashioned. Nowadays you don't have to blow off the whole door with C4 or a sawed off shotgun." He peeked through the only curtain covered window in the room.

"Things were different back in your day huh? Just how far back is that? We talking evading J Edgar Hoover or dodging Boss Hog here?" She removed the final circuit board making it easier to determine which wire was the power source to the lock. The sweat on her face trickled down her neck and collarbone. Darcy hoped that she found the right one as she snipped a curly purple wire.

"Not that far back, smart—"

"Ouch!" The safe's door popped open, grazing Darcy's knee and knocking her onto her butt.

"—ass."

Clint grabbed Darcy's forearms and helped her up from the ground.

"Holy shit."

A pile of hard drives, a black lockbox, 2 gold bullions and stacks of different paper currencies were just a few of the items jammed into the chest high safe.

Clint dug out two folded up duffle bags from his backpack and handed one to Darcy to gather up their loot.

* * *

Whatever Pierce had on the hard drives must have been super important because anyone trying to break the encryption was going to wreck their hands before they got through it. She survived undergrad, a year of grad school, years of side computer work and multiple forum flame wars that she'd waged and won, all with maybe a cramp or 3. But now a super stubborn encryption on some old HDD that'd been collecting dust in a safe had given Darcy four, yes four, cramps in her hands over the course of a couple of hours that were bad enough to put a full stop on her work.

"I need food before this thing puts me into an early retirement," she whined to Sam. They'd turned one of the spare bedrooms into a work shop of sorts. The house had everything you could ever want except for an actual room dedicated to technology.

He swiveled his chair around to face her. "Let's leave the software running while we take a break, it won't hurt us I it doesn't change anything."

As they headed down the stairs and into the kitchen, Darcy wondered if they'd ever get into the hard drives. It wasn't just the tightness of the security she was worried about, she didn't know if the encryptions were warning their owners that someone was trying to access them. Though AOL Satan had yet to mention it, keeping all of this under Pierce's radar seemed to be something that would be important to prioritize. A company with all that power could easily pull enough strings to throw a wrench in their plans.

"The grilled cheeses need a little bit longer but the tomato bisque is perfection," Clint said as they sat down at the breakfast bar.

Bowls of soup, a plate of sliced pickles and various utensils were spread out across the counter. Darcy's stomach grumbled in joy at the sight of all the food, and if the smells were anything to go by, it'd taste just as good as Clint's previous meals had. She'd just picked up a pickle when she heard footsteps thunder up the stairs.

Natasha had barely stepped into the room before she spoke, "It was a safe house."


End file.
